Judo Drills & Games #6 Developing Refereeing Skills

By IJF A-Level International referee Janet Ashida-Johnson (7th Dan, Shichidan)

Today’s drills are a fun way to get children to take an interest in refereeing and are explained by IJF A-Level International referee Janet Ashida-Johnson (7th Dan, Shichidan).

Janet, who is working on a Junior and Novice Referee Program for the USJF, tells me it was her dad who inspired her into becoming a referee.

"I was fortunate enough to have an amazing father as my sensei - Sachio Ashida. My dad came to the USA in 1953, as a Kodokan Godan (5th Dan). He helped formalize the rules for competition in the USA, and eventually became the USA Olympic Judo Coach in 1976, an Olympic Referee in 1984. As a child I would score and time keep for him while he refereed. He guided me through example.”

Janet rose through the refereeing ranks right up to IJF A-Level International and has had the honour to referee in the first IJF World Cadet Championships, several World Veterans Championships, World Cups and IBSA Pan American championships.

Today, Janet shares five drills that reinforce knowledge of refereeing commands, hand signals, and help kids understand penalties and hold down times.

Five Referee Drills for Children

1. Commands and Signals

For younger ones or those brand new to the concept of refereeing have the kids get in a large circle. One person makes a verbal command, this could be a penalty or score, like Mate. Everyone else tries to make the signal as fast as they can and hold it. Go around the circle, or pick a new leader every call to keep it fast paced and more challenging.

As their skill and knowledge level grows you can add specific penalties, or have them move around while listening/watching the leader. Depending on the number of kids playing, the leader should switch out every call or two.

2. Switch it

You can also switch it and have the leader make a signal and have the others say the call. Make sure you sneak in a Hajime once in a while because it has no hand signal!

3. Variations

For varieties of those two drills, the leader can either make a signal or a call and the other students have to do both the signal and the call appropriately. I usually have the Sensei lead this one.

4. Penalty Recognition

For work on penalty recognition put your students into groups of three. One person is the ref the other two are the competitors. The ref calls “Hajime!”, then the other two quickly act out a penalty like blocking a grip, false attack, stepping out, etc and the ref calls the “Mate!” and awards the penalty. They rotate jobs each time the referee makes the call. If there are confusions, it can also lead to great discussions for clarification (stepping out vs pushing out for example). You can run many groups simultaneously if you have enough higher ranked judoka, or refs to help out.

5. Osaekomi! Toketa!

You can also use teams of three for osaekomi and toketa practice. Make it clear that there are three jobs (ie uke , tori, and referee). uke and yori begin and need to quickly secure a hold down, keep it for at least 5 seconds, then allow the partner to escape. The one acting as the ref needs to call the command “Osaekomi!”, then “Toketa!”, along with the correct hand signal and then award the correct score: yuko, waza-ari or ippon depending on how long the hold down lasted.

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Thanks Janet! So how do you plan to use these drills at your club? Have you got any refereeing type drills to share? If so, please do so in this week’s open chat where we are also discussing if we do enough to encourage our judoka into refereeing and officiating? What do you think?

Until next week,

Nik

PS. Here’s a previous post with a certificate to give out to budding young referees!

Nicola Fairbrother MBE, 8th Dan
- 1992 Olympic Silver Medallist
- 1993 World Champion
- Publisher of Koka Kids children’s judo books